


The Queen, The Princess, and The Dark

by Rhaeluna



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Fairy Tale Style, Horror, Lovecraftian, Post-Canon, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-12 16:02:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19576459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhaeluna/pseuds/Rhaeluna
Summary: Elsa and Anna defend their land from a cloud of darkness that eats people.





	The Queen, The Princess, and The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Submitted as part of the June 2019 fanfic writing contest on [the Elsanna-Shenanigans Tumblr.](https://elsanna-shenanigans.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [See the full results here.](https://elsanna-shenanigans.tumblr.com/post/186060508257/june-2019-contest-results)
> 
> [2019 Edit: This fic was conceptualized and written before Frozen 2 came out, just FYI.]

Generations ago, in a land of icy fjords, there prospered a kingdom ruled by two sisters. The elder, the witch Elsa, was Queen of the ice and snow, Lord of the north winds and the aurora borealis. From the tips of her fingers she cast ice rinks for her people to skate upon and snow cones for them to eat during summer. She was just and true, beloved by all. Anna, the younger sister, ruled at her sister’s side, unwilling to be married off to a foreign noble in the long game of power and nations. When the Queen’s advisers lectured the old ways and the duties of a princess, Elsa scoffed at them and twirled her cape. 

“My sister shall remain by my side forevermore,” she said, “so long as that is her wish.”

At that her advisers balked, but Princess Anna grew red in the cheeks and embraced her elder sister from behind. “I love you, Elsa,” said she, and their happiness was palpable.

The Queen cooed and ruffled the girl’s hair. So it was, despite the whispers of her council. The monarch sisters took no husbands and named no heirs, spurring gossip the kingdom over. To the crowds they were family united in joined governance. Platonic, empathetic, and magnanimous. In private, however, the sisters shared in each other like newlyweds, their love pulsing forth from places considered unseemly between siblings of blood. None knew their secret save the ghosts that drifted between them.

Years passed, and the kingdom’s people flourished under the sisters’ leadership, magic and kindness incarnate. The ink of a new, successful diplomatic accord was just beginning to dry when first word of the darkness came. “It tumbled over the border like a fog,” the garrison captain told Anna and Elsa in alarm, “all who were caught by its tendrils were eaten!”

“Eaten by what?” asked Princess Anna.

The captain wrung his hands. “The darkness, your highness! The darkness ate my men!”

“That can’t be!”

The sisters held each other, knowledge of Elsa’s freezing magic in the forefront of their hushed conversation. Surely magic of darkness was not impossible? After but a moment of deliberation they gathered their cloaks and followed the captain to the kingdom’s edge.

They arrived on a cloudy day, the color washed from the green hills and burrows about them. A shadow billowed before their eyes like plumes of volcanic ash. It moved across the land at a slow, steady pace, snarls like breaking glass rumbling from within. Easy enough to outrun, but impossible to stop. Elsa tried, her magic like cold fireworks, but to no avail. The darkness rolled over the highest wall of ice she could muster and braced like a stone warrior against the gales of her northerly snows.

Before despair could take them, the dark made its move. “Elsa, look out!” cried Anna from behind her sister. The Queen glanced from her casting to see a long, snaking tendril of black soot careening towards her. Before it could take her, the captain shoved her aside. The tendril engulfed his center and snapped him down the middle like a dry twig, pulling the two halves into its miasma.

Anna roared. She rushed towards Elsa and beat the still-hunting tendril back with her mother’s magic sword, hauling her dumbstruck sister to her feet and fleeing back the way they came. They’d made it to their horses when Anna turned to her sister and spoke.

“Elsa, we have to do something!”

The Queen was not breathing well. “What can we do? My magic did nothing!”

“That is not true! And my sword hurt it–maybe we can beat it back!”

The Queen was terrified, for there had never been been something that her magic could not create or destroy, yet she knew her sister’s words to be righteous. For the people of her land, she had to try. Three times then did the women attempt to slay the entity before them and three times did they fail. No matter how deep the cut or large the icicle the miasma did not demure. They rode away wounded and breathing heavily, barely able to hold the reigns of their mounts. The sun set. The Queen and her princess were in their own ways great warriors but it meant nothing against the shadow.

A notice was sent across the kingdom as fast as the Queen’s ravens could fly: “Flee the darkness, do not fight, and find shelter in the castle.” As the people fled towards their capital their monarchs attempted everything they could think of to stop the blight. Spells, incantations, pleading, and sacrifice. None saved them.

The sisters didn’t know what else to do. If they escaped by boat, would the darkness eat them at sea? Who would come if they called for help? Already so many were lost. A deluge of citizens took shelter within their keep but it was barely a fraction of the kingdom’s population. A hard week passed and Elsa saw the darkness on the horizon from her castle window. She despaired. The gates were closed, the guards armed with enchanted swords and polearms. The Queen never thought herself very brave–she’d spent a decade hiding from her sister and her magic, barely able to feed her starving body. There was no guarantee that her plan wasn’t dooming them all. Anna approached her at the balcony and placed a kiss upon her neck.

“Here it comes.”

The undulating smog scoured the land in its race towards the castle. Fear gripped the citizenry like a plague, the sisters at their center. If they delayed to let more people into the castle they would all die. With a grand, sweeping motion Elsa summoned all the might of her sorcery and grew a thick, impenetrable dome of ice all around the castle. It glistened and cast all its contents in a crystal blue. The Queen collapsed into the arms of her love. The darkness collided with the magical ice like a flood, waves of it spraying up the side. A cheer from the castle below, and Elsa turned to offer her sister a small, sad smile.

“If it does not pass us by, we will run out of air, sun, and food. We may only be delaying death, my love.”

Anna frowned and drew up to her full height. “Despair will not save our lives, sister. We will find a way.”

The Queen laughed. “My kingdom for the hope you hold in your heart.”

Within the hour the shadow had blanketed the dome and blotted out the sun. Lamps were lit in the castle halls. Elsa and Anna watched the miasma swirl over their sky, its darkness unbroken.

A week passed, then another. The air staled. The food stores in the castle vaults vanished and the water grew sour. Fear spread like winter frost, the darkness was absolute. Elsa and Anna lost the brilliant color in their faces and eyes and heavy lines worried into their foreheads. Their people begged, their people cried. They had only moments of peace alone.

Another week passed and a hole burst in the top of the dome. The darkness had been eating away at the weakest point in the shield, biding its time. Elsa flung her magic at the tear but the miasma was already pouring through like a waterfall. It gushed onto the castle grounds and enveloped the lower floors, dissolving man, beast, and brick. Screams filtered through the dim, only to be silenced a moment later. Elsa and Anna raced downwards from their tower and met with the guard, their shining spelled weapons clashing with the shadow’s tendrils in arcs of sparks. It was all so sudden, and Elsa had no way to reach her dying people past the wall of ink. Her heart broke. In panic and fear she sealed the passage, dooming the people she’d been charged to save. She raced through the upper floors of the castle and sealed off windows, doors, but the shadow was already entrenched. With every encounter the dark ate another guard, another maid, another poor citizen. By the time she and Anna reached the highest tower, their clothes ripped and their muscles sore, they were all that remained.

The darkness charged up the stairs after them.

Elsa spoke through tears, “Even in death I will cherish every moment we shared together. No heaven or hell can ever take that away.”

“Never. I would not change a thing, Elsa.”

“Are you sure?” The Queen had a dire look in her eye.

Anna laughed. “Alright,” she said, thinking of their years spent apart as teens, “perhaps a few things.”

The darkness exploded through the chamber door and there were no more passages to run down, no more entrances to barricade. Its tendrils slithered across the masoned walls.

“I wish we could have done more,” said Elsa, thinking of her people.

“We did all we could.”

The shadow lunged at them. In a moment of instinct, powered by a fierce, carnal love and protectiveness, Elsa flexed her magic and let out a lion’s roar. She pulled her sister to her chest and the two lovers erupted in ice. A thousand-sided star grew around them, stabbing at the darkness like thorns. The world grew blue, then black, and the last thing Elsa saw was Anna’s sad, smiling face.

The time the sisters spent in hibernation was long and haunted by dreams of an infinite dark. Stars went out one by one until the unending void surrounded them on all sides. In nightmares Elsa slowly lost feeling of her body. She was a consciousness; trapped in nothingness until her lifespan gave way to the grave.

When she finally awoke she was lying entwined with Anna in a bed of snow. The sky above her shone red and the darkness was gone. No castle, no people, no sound. Her muscles felt like lead as she tried to move. Their clothes were rotted away to dust around their bodies. They were at sea, cradled on a floating ship of ice. The water was as red as the sky and hot to the touch. Elsa spun around but could see no land. Far above her a broken moon sat amongst the stars, half its face crushed to floating rubble. Her nose filled with the scent of ancient decay.

Anna slept at her side, untouched by age or wear. Had they been asleep a week or a thousand years? Elsa wished she could tell. She had failed in every conceivable way–as a ruler, as a sister, as a daughter, as a friend. What curse kept her alive while her people were no doubt long dead?

The red ocean bubbled next to her and a swirling mass of eyes and mouths breached the surface. Elsa couldn’t find it in herself to be afraid. The thing blinked a hundred foul orbs of a dozen different sizes, its bulk no doubt gargantuan below the darkening tides. A minute passed. Almost with indifference the thing slid back under into nothingness and was gone from sight. Elsa shook her head and gazed up at the unfamiliar stars.

Anna began to stir. What were they to do?

Their best, Elsa thought. It was all they’d ever been able to do.


End file.
